UNC and Veteran's Day

Since moving to North Carolina I have learned how important Carolina basketball is and tonight was a big night for Carolina basketball.  The NCAA basketball session kicked off tonight with UNC playing against Michigan State on an air craft carrier.  There's been a lot of talk about the game around campus and it was a beautiful site!

In honor of the game, I have a craft project to show off! I have a friend who is a fantastic artist and does beautiful work with TOMS (find her here at http://www.eyefordesigncreative.biz/).  I wanted something a little simpler so I tried myself and here are the results!

For those of you who don't know, the argyle is from the UNC basketball jerseys and their mascot is the TarHeels...hence the feet with a spot of tar on the heel.  I'm pretty happy with how they turned out but I'm a little afraid to wear them because I don't know how well they are going to wash...but we will see!

Teaching Science to 5th Graders

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of talking to 90 5th graders about science...over the phone.  My cousin is a 5th grade reading teacher in Texas and their story that week had been about a scientist who used microscopes to see living things in pond water and volcanic ash.  Of course the scientist was a man and the girls in the class were totally grossed out by the idea of tiny, creepy, crawly things so she wanted to give them a different perspective on science.

We wanted to do video chat but of course there were technical difficulties and I ended up just talking to the kids over speaker phone but it worked out really well! Because it was breast cancer awareness month and I have been involved in cancer research, we talked a lot about breast cancer.  I was really impressed by the kids' willingness to ask questions about cancer and I hope that I helped them understand it a little bit better. We also talked about the scientific method and things like specimens and microscopes to include their vocabulary words from the week.

The best part was the stories that my cousin told me about her kids' reactions.  She said that a lot of the girls did get more engaged in the science and she is hopeful that we gave them the idea that science doesn't have to be gross guy stuff.  The most exciting story was about a little boy who my cousin has been struggling to get to write in his journal.  While I was talking the kids were suppose to be taking notes and while a lot of the kids got excited about asking questions and forgot to take notes, this kid took lots of notes, and not just useless notes like my name and where I went to school, he was taking notes about the science that I was talking about and understanding the important parts of what I was saying.  We may have just found this kids' calling in life: science!

This week I got a thank you card from the kids (please disregard my hideous floor)

There notes are so sweet and also show how much some of them truly got from talking to me.  Stuff like this reminds me why I also want to teach and not just do research for the rest of my life! I am looking forward to working with a bunch of 5th and 6th grade girls at a UNC event in a few weeks.  A friend and I are going to teach them about DNA and have them extract DNA from a strawberry! Hopefully they will be well behaved and I'll be able to take some pictures!

Exciting Saturday!

The North Carolina State Fair is wrapping up this weekend and Lucas had never been to the fair before so we decided to venture to Raleigh.  We didn't try any fried candy bars but we did enjoy lots of various fair food, Lucas tried his hand at a fair game (and predictably lost), and we did lots of people watching.  As we were leaving we saw this:

Ice cream being made with John Deere motors! We didn't try any because we were already stuffed but the idea definitely caught my eye!  Overall, the fair was a great time but I am glad we went during the day and didn't wait any later because it was busy enough when we were there and was only getting busier when we left.

When we got home I decided to make a Coca-Cola cake.  After three trips to the grocery store to get all the ingredients I finally ended up with a delicious cake!

For stopping in the middle of the icing to go get powdered sugar, it turned out pretty well.  Thanks to pinterest for the recipe!!

For any of you who are interested, here's the recipe:

Preheat oven to 300

Mix:

2 cups flour

2 cups sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

In a saucepan over medium high heat, stir this together until it boils:

1 cup butter

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup coca-cola 

1/2 cup buttermilk

Take off heat and add to the flour mix. 

Add

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix, put in 9 x 13 pan and bake for a little over 30 minutes

When cake is nearly done make the glaze in a saucepan:

1/2 cup butter

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup coca-cola

Once the mixture boils, remove and slowly stir in 4 cups of powdered sugar.  Add a cup of chopped pecans and pour over the finished cake. 

Take Home Test= Fall Wreath

This weekend I have a take home test to do that is due Wednesday.  I didn't want to spend the entire weekend working because well, there's no way that would be productive so I decided this was the weekend to make a fall wreath.  I brought sunflowers, chrysanthemums, and fall leaves a few weeks ago but had never bought a wreath to put it on so yesterday when I got half way through my test I went to Joann's to get the wreath! CJ was very confused as to what I had brought home.

I still needed to work a little before I was ready to stop for the night and work on the wreath so CJ helped me study a little.

For the wreath, I took a grapevine wreath and just stuck the flowers and leaves down in the vine.  For the most part it felt like the stems intertwined with the vines would hold them in place but to make sure I glued some of them in place and used wire on other stems to make sure they won't fall out of the wreath. I added a bow in with the flowers because I thought the middle of my flower arrangement need a little more orange since it ended up mostly yellow. Here's a close up of the finish product. 

Making the wreath was pretty easy but hanging it was a little bit more difficult.  I wanted to make sure that the wreath didn't cover up the apartment number on the door but the problem is that a normal door wreath hanger would put the wreath over the apartment number.  So, I decided to use ribbon the hang the wreath.  I tied ribbon around the top of the wreath and then put the ribbon over the door and tied it to a hook on the inside of the door. It's working pretty well so far, hopefully it stays tied! Here's a picture of the final product!

Now I really want pumpkins but I'm trying to hold off until we can find a good pumpkin patch and maybe even a corn maze to go to!!!

Now Introducing, Claudia Jean!

Meet Claudia Jean, or CJ, the cat! We ventured to several different animal shelters over Labor Day weekend in search of a dog.  After visiting several shelters and looking online, I still hadn't found one small enough that I was comfortable having them in the apartment.  While at one shelter, after being severely disappointed by the dog prospects, we went into the cat room and Miss CJ came to my side! Well, really my feet, but anyway... I just couldn't leave a cat that was so quiet and cuddly. The shelter had just brought her in from the larger county shelter so a lot of the information about her got lost in the move.  I have no idea how old she and all we know about her past was that she was surrendered but we don't know why her former family had to give her up.

So here's a picture from the first day I saw her at the shelter, she is hunched down so you can't really tell what size she is but she's pretty tall but she's not a huge cat by any means.

She's been here a week so she's adjusted a lot.  Almost immediately after we got home we found out that she can open the cabinet doors in the apartment so that was her favorite place to hide at first.  Luckily, she didn't get in any that have pots or serving dishes in them and she's gotten over that.  Now if she's hiding she's probably under the bed but that's usually only if she is sleeping or if she's mad at us for yelling at her.  Which leads to the other thing she does, I promise we don't abuse our cat and yell at her all the time....but we have a fish.  We were hopeful that she just wouldn't notice the fish because it's up on top of a rather tall bookcase/media tower kind of thing...I know, definitely wishful thinking.  Unfortunately this media tower is beside the TV stand/TV/speakers set up so she can climb up the TV stand and speakers to get to the fish and occasionally the fish catches her eye and this is just what she does.  She hasn't tried to swipe at the fish, but then again, unless she's doing it at night she hasn't had an opportunity to do more because we very promptly yell at her to get down.  And then she gets mad at us and runs away for a little while and won't associate with us.  

Overall, she has turned out to be a precious little cat and she gives me a good break from staring at the computer screen when I'm reading for class (bc ALL of my classwork is on the computer in the form of powerpoints and literature papers).  That's our news for the week! I hope everyone is enjoying the cooler weather!

Being a Scientist and my First Lab Rotation

Like most crafty women, I am addicted to Pinterest and I found this adorable picture from an early education blog tonight.

http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/

The picture and her post about how each of her students is a scientist made me think about me being a scientist so I just wanted to share about my experience being a scientist thus far.  

So, let's begin with a little background.  I was incredibly blessed to be drawn to an undergrad institution that allowed me to do scientific research all four years I was in school there.  The easy explanation of what I did was work to cure cancer.  In reality, what I did will only very, very distantly influence the cancer field but it was always nice to have a basis for my work.

Now moving into graduate school, I will rotate through three labs this year and at the end of the year I will choose the lab to work in until my thesis committee deems me ready to graduate (hopefully after working in the lab for about four years).  Coming in to choose a lab I was faced with the fact that I can't choose a lab simply because they are working on something related to cancer even though that explanation has become so comforting to me so, I am expanding my view and trying new things.  

So, now about my first rotation.  The lab I am working in does basic research (meaning working mainly within cells, not up to the level of applying it in humans) but everything relates to a disease.  The project I am working on deals with how toxins (and also medicines) are broken down within the body. I've only been working in the lab for two weeks so I'm not really into the details of the project but just being in the lab has reminded me that a scientist is constantly asking questions and looking for new ways to answer those questions.  As Lucas says, I've suddenly become friends with people who are on average 25 years old and these people are indeed changing how I view life and science.  So, I look forward to beginning to ask more and more questions and keeping you and maybe even some little first graders updated on what a scientist is.  

Hurricane Irene

Hi all!!

I made it through a rather boring but somewhat helpful orientation and my first week of classes.  I am really excited for my classes but it is definitely taking some adjusting. I technically am taking four classes but one is my lab rotation (more on that next week) and the other is "First Year Group." It's like the freshman orientation class that a lot of university's have students take just adjusted up for graduate students. My other two classes however, are more focused lecture/discussion classes.  What's weird with them is that we have a different professor at least every week in both of those classes.  I like the idea of this because I'm being taught by experts but it's also difficult to wrap my mind around adjusting to a different person every week.  I am looking forward to it though!!

So now, for what all of you are worried about...Hurricane Irene

Yes, Hurricane Irene hit the North Carolina coast today.  Yes, it just stopped raining here a little while ago.  But they are not predicting that the heavy rain/winds will come this far inland.  We are expecting rain and fairly significant winds tomorrow (gusts up to 40 mph) but nothing too terrible.  We have plenty of food and drink and are planning on staying at home all day tomorrow and enjoying the rain. For those of you who aren't  that familiar with North Carolina, Chapel Hill is only slightly west of Raleigh.  You can pretty easily watch the hurricane in relation to Raleigh so hopefully that will help! If you are concerned just text me and I'll tell you what's happening here!

On a slightly happier note, I got my North Carolina driver's license today!!

Have a great weekend!

Wonderful Furniture

If you have every lived in an apartment or a home for even just a few days without furniture, you know that it is rather uncomfortable.  So, while I realize that I am extremely blessed to have this furniture, I am so so glad it is here.  It took a while to get everything clean and organized and my desk is still a mess but here a pictures of the furniture!!

Bedroom:
The nightstands have charging stations in the top drawer so you can charge up to four devices.  There are also lights under the nightstand to turn on when you get up at night.  I still want a lamp but they are really nice.

The half bath in the laundry room is nautilus shell!

 

The living room, so far I've spent a lot of time on the couch watching the West Wing but I guess that's going to have to stop soon when I actually go to school...

 

And the piece of furniture I was most excited about, the dining room table:

 

The wall decorations are sticker clings. The white dots are white boards and the black dots are chalkboards.  We used them tonight to plan our meals for next week and I'm pretty excited about them in general.

I continue to be amazed by this area.  This morning we went to two Farmer's Markets and got some fantastic produce.  I am most excited about the peaches I got.  We're grocery shopping tomorrow so that should be another adventure!

The Beauties of Moving

Moving day arrived and in came all my stuff.  It was a little bit of a mess..

Living room:

 

Dining room:

 Office:

My room:

After moving all of that in, mom and I went to Target to grab a few essentials.  While we were gone Lucas being the wonderful person he is cleaned and got it to looking like this:

and this:

Since then we've spent most of time organizing, cleaning, buying food, etc. Everything is arranged and now I get to start picking out wall decorations! Tomorrow I'll post pictures of the furniture!

We made it!

We made it!  The drive was pretty uneventful, my tire pressure light coming on was about the most dramatic thing that happened and we think it's just from being too hot.  We went furniture shopping today and I'll include pictures below of some of what we got.  I have all of my big furniture except a coffee table now!!! All the salesmen kept asking us about the heat...they didn't seem to understand that Oklahoma/Arkansas is really, really hot.  I hope everyone at home is staying cool!! Now for pictures:

Living room:

 

For those of you who know Lucas, I'll also have his brown leather chair, TV, black TV stand, and dark wooden media chest in the living room.  Any ideas for wall art or a coffee table are appreciated!!

Spare room:

The spare room will mostly be an office/where I study when I don't need the entire dining room table so here's the desk.  We still have to decide what we're doing about a bed for when guests come (hint, hint, please come visit!). I also still need a bookshelf and a chair...but that will come.

Dining room:

Just a table, nothing exciting...but there will be a red accent wall in the dining room so that will be more exciting!

We also got two night stands and a dresser for the bedroom but I didn't take a picture of that...so you can see it when I get the room at least mostly set up! I actually move into the apartment tomorrow but I won't have internet for a while and the furniture doesn't get there until Tuesday. That just leaves more time for unpacking boxes!!! (Not excited...)

Moving Day!

Tomorrow's the day, moving day!! For those of you who have been in touch with us, plans have changed so many times I can barely keep up (my landlady is a little crazy) but we're leaving tomorrow no matter what...we're leaving before she can call and change our plans again.  Currently the cars are loaded down with everything except our clothes bags and all the little things I keep forgetting in the house so we are set for an early start.  Keep watching for pictures of the trip (ok, there probably won't be exciting pictures of the trip) and my new apartment!!!